Fall At Your Feet
by MapleleafCameo
Summary: Sherlock returns hoping to be forgiven. Rated T - because:) - Established relationship Happy Birthday to starrysummernights - this is because of you:)


**A/N: This is a happy birthday present for the talented starrysummernights! Happy birthday starry! Make her day by reading her fics – she is an incredible writer. Very hot stuff:D I asked starry to give me 3 words. She gave me cat, sunshine and cinnamon. Cat I may have fudge on a little:D**

**This story is a companion piece to **_**Lifted Up, Crashing Down**_** and **_**Ordinary Day**_**. You don't have to have read either piece but it would be nice if you did:). A song inspires each piece. This one is inspired by **_**Fall At Your Feet**_** by **_**Crowded House**_**. This is where I thank SassyVeeDub for creating that little earworm in my head-it haunts me still Sassy. The song is different from the story but some of the song is in the story. And thanks to mattsloved1 for looking this over for me!**

**As usual I do not own - that belongs to the Great and Powerful Mofftiss and BBC and ACD. As usual it makes me sad. Sigh! Why Mofftiss, why?**

Fall At Your Feet

_I stand here and he stands there and there is an impossibly wide chasm opening between us. I don't think I can cross it. I think if I move I will fragment and fly apart and not even he, finder of lost things, will be able to find all of the pieces._

He stands there and looks at me. He looks broken, as if he'd shattered and someone put him back together, but didn't know him the way I do. They didn't put all of the pieces in the right place. One good shock and he'll tear apart again. My return could do that, will do it, if I can't make him understand.

_There are too many emotions coming through at once and I can't channel them. They are smothering me and I can't breathe. I am angry and hurt and I am relieved and shaken. Overlaying, holding it together, holding me together, is love. And I do not want to love him. I do not want to forgive him. I am afraid of what may happen if I do forgive him._

His hands are twitching. He's thinned his lips and holding them tight in order not to shout at me. He is deciding whether to hit me or embrace me. I would rather he embrace me, but perhaps I deserve to be hit.

_I want to hit him. I want to hit him so badly and make him feel the pain his death caused, make it manifest itself on his skin, mar that perfection and show the world the sharp edges of my anguish. And yet I want to hold him and see if he is real. Hold him and feel the solidness of him. Hold him and never let him go._

My feet move with out conscious thought. I am going forward and before I can stop myself I fall at his feet. I wrap my arms around his waist and bury my face in his midriff. I inhale. All the remembered and so badly missed John scents are there, sunshine and tea, cinnamon and toast. And warmth, like a blanket. He doesn't move. And I am afraid.

_I can't move. I don't know what to do. I am not ready for this. It's too much._

Please, I think at him. I shudder with the acceptance that John will turn and walk away. It's so hard to breathe. I think about how the lungs work, how they inhale and exhale, but there is no space in my chest for them to move. If he walks away he will take the rest of the oxygen with him, all that's left from his anger and his hurt radiating out from him, burning up most of the available air.

_He is shaking._

Something touches my head. Fingers brush through my hair. I lean into his touch automatically, remembering his caresses, touches I had thought of, clung to when it was bad.

_I had forgotten how soft his hair is. How could I have forgotten?_

"Please, John."

"_Shh, it's alright."_

"I'm so sorry."

"_Why?"_

I know what he is asking. He's not asking what I am sorry for; he is asking why I did what I did. I have always read between the lines and perceived the hidden tales of John Watson.

"I had to, John. Moriarty held all the strings. You would have been killed, shot in the head by a sniper. You and Lestrade and Mrs. Hudson. He created my downfall, stole the heart I didn't know I had, made it so if I had lived I wouldn't have wanted to. I had no choice."

_He pulls back and he looks up at me with those luminescent catlike eyes, filled with pain, filled with sorrow. I don't have to mark him. One look in his eyes and everyone would see what this did to him. What it did to us._

John's hand cups my face and his thumb brushes against my cheek. So much grief and sorrow in his eyes, eyes made old.

_I lean down and place my forehead on his, connect and bond, simple physical contact bridging the gap between us. _

Simple touch accomplishing what I cannot speak, emotions being the foreign tongue I do not know. Some things are too hard to say, but this dialect of sentiments, this language John speaks so clearly, even I can understand it.

_I move my hand from his cheek to his chin and I tilt it up. I have gone beyond the place where anger resides. I lean in further and brush his lips with mine. Tears I had not realized were in my eyes, drop onto his face and paint it with the remains of my heartache. As they run down his cheeks, my sorrow and pain drains out of me and follows them to the floor._

I feel his tears fall on my face. I feel his slow burning pain leave him. I feel my worry and fear recede. John slides to the floor and wraps his arms around me and his soft tentative kisses, filled with forgiveness and regret for those lost years, turn hungry and demanding. This. This is how we will purge the last of it from inside.

This is where we begin again.


End file.
